April 30, 2008

Chimplet #3 is seven years old; she still loves fluffy toys, anything in pink, and her favourite form of locomotion is skipping. So far there has been no request to buy GTA4 or imbibe alcohol; nor is there an inclination to swear at her teachers. This must mean that's she's at odds with the majority of Britain's children who, if you believe the Daily Mail, are turning our landscape into something resembling the set of Full Metal Jacket.She has noticed and shrugged off the fuss over her idol Miley Cyrus' apparently obscene photoshoot in Vanity Fair, something which is causing me to scratch my head.The interesting thing about the story is the implied disapproval from Disney, Cyrus' ultimate boss, who I can't really believe care about underage girls posing provocatively in photos. After all, it's OK for Disney to plaster pics of an even younger female model in her underwear over the billboards of Beijing.On an entirely unrelated note, you can buy Disney products at Tesco, who have an equally erratic moral compass.

April 28, 2008

Designed to be outstandingly dull and, by relentless repetition, to hammer the Calgon brand into your subsconscious, this ad has been well and truly noticed within the Chimp household. It has taken on the persona of a brain-sucking horror filmlet, something akin to the Ring stories. Beware of Calgon Man, half way through applying his evil clown make-up, as he rebuilds his giant mincer. You never see the bottom part of Calgon Man’s body. Calgon Man stands on mutated crab legs. Calgon Man can see you through the telly. He will eat your kidneys.

I am unconvinced of the existence of omnipotent desert-born sky ghosts, but if people want to believe in them and wear the badges, then let them be, I say.Religion is responsible for some of the most resilient brands in history, plus some awesome patent protection. Their brand directors tend to stay in their jobs for life and follow strict dress codes. Being a brand loyalist is usually pretty harmless, although switching brands occasionally raises eyebrows.It was therefore a shame to see a touch of religious nuttership in my sleepy village. Every piece of street furniture has one of these stickers. The odd thing is that the target of this spite attack doesn’t actually exist. A nearby neighbour occasionally travels about 30 miles to the nearest mosque. He told me this in the pub. Over a pint.And there’s the Turkish family who run the kebab shop on the high street (opposite the quaint Norman church), but bearing in mind the contents of their shopping trolley, spotted in Asda one parched summer’s day a year or so ago, I’d hardly label them as committed members of that faraway mosque.This campaign, should it occur in Wembley or Bradford, would be inflammatory and whip up some nasty feeling. The reaction at Sleepyville? Any angry marches by outraged Christians worried about a Saracen invasion? No, just a letter in the local paper complaining about the eyesores spoiling our lamp posts.

It was off to the WWE wrestling again last week as I indulged Chimplet #1 in his favourite craze, this time at the O2. The events are perfectly pitched for the adolescent mentality with its mix of heroes and villains, long-running storylines, acrobatics and women with massive tits. That last bit always gets my attention as the wrestling divas get it on. Gorgeous women fighting… it was even better than the midget beating the shit out of someone in the ring. Christ, that last sentence sounds like a bad night at Gary Glitter’s Cambodian hideaway.Here’s the thing that I just don’t get: grown-up chavs getting high on WWE. I swear they think the whole thing’s a real sport. I think the British demographic is the equivalent of US rednecks. There was evidence of some serious inbreeding in the audience. The security guards were confiscating banjoes at the front doors.Take a look at the picture. Note the glimmer of digital- and phone-cameras as The Undertaker approaches the ring. These people spent the entire night taking pictures and (illegally) filming it. That’s nearly four hours of standing in a spot that cost £45 looking at a tiny digital screen instead of watching what they bloody well paid for! Someone please explain!Here's a just-retired wrestler selling you financial products. Turn up the volume to enjoy. Would you borrow money from this man?

April 21, 2008

"The throat is a passageway connecting the back of the mouth and nose to the esophagus and to the trachea. After chewing delicious food given by the grace of our Heavenly Father, we swallow and the partially digested nutrients go down the throat."

April 18, 2008

Typical. Another wretched eye infection on a day when my monkey hordes are out on projects means that I’m in my basement media centre while high on painkillers. Luckily it’s poets day and I have very few visitors, which is good because I keep saying “fuck!” a lot. I just hope my mum doesn’t ring.When I return to Giraffe Towers on Monday (hopefully cured), I’ll watch this O2 ad again and find that it simply shows a lovey dovey couple communicating with each other over a great distance. I hope that’s the case because I’m sure that right now what I’m seeing is a psychedelic nightmare featuring rampaging teddy bears, invading frogs and multiple moons. What the fuck does this vision mean? I’m fucking high on pethidine tablets, that’s what. No sane person would make an ad like that, would they?

April 17, 2008

I have neither the time nor the patience to outline all of the reasons why the Green religion is a rip-off. Suffice to say that much of its dogma is based upon unproven theory, the net effect being that we have to change our habits and lifestyles whatever the economic consequences because doing X might cause Y to happen. There is a sinister subsidiary effect too, which is that paying lip-service to the religion grants the utterer an aegis of sanctimony. Brands are forced to scrabble around and declare their supposed Green credentials, and critical eyes pass over them to look for more victims.Which is why I want to rip this embarrassed looking press ad into tiny pieces. It would be passably good – the double meaning of the tag line (Some journeys cannot be put into words) binding the brand and the subject nicely – except for the barely readable piece of text at the bottom: “Keith Richards and Louis Vuitton are proud to support The Climate Project”.Richards probably is amused at the irony of this splurt of nonsense (or, more likely, not give a shit) recalling that the Rolling Stones' recent ''A Bigger Bang'' tour took in North America, South America, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, China and Australia. How did the Stones get around? I bet they didn’t fucking swim.The Climate Project is Al Gore’s baby. Yes, you probably guessed I’m a sceptic, but only where people present facts which do not have evidence to back them. An Inconvenient Truth is well-named, and not for the reasons Gore intended. Ah bollocks, I’m ranting again. I wonder if Al Gore buys Louis Vuitton?

April 15, 2008

YouTube has some ambiguous content, and it's never entirely clear whether the interesting stuff has been spawned in a marketing brain. I'm open-minded about this one, currently one of the rising stars of YouTube, and am rather fond of its completely stupid but nevertheless spooky premise. Anyone remember the Portuguese ghost girl? Well, try this one: the Argentinian gnome.

April 11, 2008

Yeah, we all had a bloody good laugh at today’s story about the Ali-G-speaking chav girl who ordered a “cab-innit?” and, instead of getting a taxi, received a cabinet the following morning.Read through the story and it mentions furniture firm Displaysense. Dig deeper and you find the story on a free press release service, with a company biog helpfully supplied. Dig even deeper and you find the same company reported in the press earlier in the year as having been the victim of an unusual assault by a non-existent member of the public who was caught having sex with one of its mannequins.Both stories are bullshit. The story is clearly a PR plant, and it’s a sad fact that the papers are passing it off as true.Displaysense deserve some praise for the stunts, because its job is to shift furniture. We should be less forgiving of Her Majesty’s Press, which loves to get on its sanctimonious high horse about shagging CEOs, lying politicians, ranting mono-limbed celebrities, neglectful parents and declining standards in public life. Stories like this serve as a reminder that they just need to fill the required number of pages with newsprint to sell, and sod the truth.If you think this is unlikely, then its happened before. Anyone remember stories about Paul Hucker? He’s the chap who insured himself against the grief of seeing the England footie team getting knocked out of the World Cup. This was picked up by virtually every newspaper and reported as fact. As revealed by Guardian journalist Nick Davies, it was PR from a insurance company.

April 04, 2008

This spoof of a current Volvic Water ad is nicely done. Its creator has taken bits of sound from the brand website and meshed it into the original. I didn't much like the original, which was rubbish, and made me wonder if the water contained traces of dinosaur poo.

April 02, 2008

I'm still not entirely convinced that this isn't an April Fools joke, but this was posted in March and there's a little too much effort in the supporting website for it to be a one-day-wonder by some small company. Still, this call for volunteers to wear marketing tattoos is a bloody good laugh. Check out the website and look at the fee chart.My favourite bit is in the press release:"I know some will think of this as exploitation but they are misguided. Lots of people have tattoos for fun and we are giving them an opportunity to get paid for doing the same thing! Besides our logo is a lot more tasteful than say the Leeds United logo or the name of an ex girlfriend. We are also doing a careful screening process to ensure vulnerable people such as drug addicts and the mentally ill are not branded."

**Edit**

From Laptops Direct's Marketing Manager (see Comments):

"This was an April Fools joke but we were amazed by the response. We had over 100 emails from people expressing outrage at our moral indecency!"

If you have endured cancelled flights and lost baggage at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, then here’s why: trucks have been pissing around on the runway.You’ve got to appreciate the timing as Fallon’s machines (a metaphor for Joy) arse around for the pure hell of it, while British Airways (a metaphor for Another Almighty British Fuck Up And Just You Wait For 2012, Suckers) ruins the travel plans of thousands of passengers and cancels its advertising.